This photo essay is the next best thing to attending the San Francisco Meals on Wheel’s Star Chefs and Vintner’s Gala, SF’s premiere food fundraising event.
Most of AJ’s cycling friends thought he was crazy. It wasn’t because he was biking 545-miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a week for the AIDS Lifecycle. He does that every year to raise money for the San Francisco AIDS foundation. The crazy part was on the first day of the ride, after waking up at 4:30am, I was going to go drive him to the ride kick-off and drop him off for his 7 am ride out. I would then drive home, sleep for a few hours, while he raced down to Santa Cruz, 85 miles away, to reach there by 1pm. I would then re-wake up at 10 am, to drive down there, help him pitch his tent, and drive both of us back to San Francisco. Then we’d both hop in our tuxedos to attend the Meals on Wheel’s Star Chefs and Vintner’s Gala. After eating more fabulous food than humanly possible, I drove AJ back to camp, where he crawled back into the tent (extremely well fed) and he slept soundly to wake the next day to ride out. Crazy? Perhaps a little. But there was no way AJ could miss the premiere food fundraising event of the year, one that had over 100 chefs serving us appetizers, a 3-course meal, and desserts, as well as over 90 wineries pouring us some of the best wine. I’m so glad we didn’t miss the record-breaking event that raised over 2.6 million dollars for homebound seniors, enough to provide more than 565,000 meals for them. I just really hope next year they don’t coincide on the same day!
For more fun photos of the event, pop on over to my Instagram feed and scroll down to last week, or just check out the hashtag #mowsfgala and see what other people were eating during the event (trust me, I couldn’t get to all the food that was there)!
Special thanks to Charles Zukow Associates and Meals on Wheels San Francisco for providing us press tickets to cover the gala. I was not monetarily compensated for this post, though the tickets were provided to us both. All opinions listed above are my own.
Mary says
Wow, it looks beautiful! It’s amazing to me how different the lives of others are so much different. When this was going on, I was getting ready to plant my garden in Upstate NY. I’m glad you the opportunity, it must have been amazing.
Miss Kim @ behgopa says
Dang look at all that yummy food! Looks so delicious and like so much fun, -a food lover’s heaven! And wow AJ is hardcore!!
Felisa says
You know, if A.J. can’t make it, I would totally take one for the team and go with you. Just sayin’…
Extra Virgin says
This looks really good! Thumbs up! I would add some fine Italian extravirgin olive oil